due to some marketing bs we are being forced to watch tonight’s mets game on ap*le tv and the use of helvetica in all of the graphic overlays really adds a sense of profound alienation to the whole scene
Bezos has pledged to donate $1 billion to his charity. Although this might seem good at face value, “billionaire philanthropy” itself is created by the problems it purports to solve.
There has been an unprecedented transfer of wealth to billionaires during the pandemic - their fortunes grew to a record high of $10.2 trillion while millions of workers sunk into poverty.
These two phenomena – surging wealth inequality alongside the increased social role of “charitable” handouts from the super-rich – are closely intertwined. Without extreme levels of social inequality, it wouldn’t be necessary to rely on the alms of billionaires “donating” the funds back to society just to meet critical social needs.
Now, some of these billionaires have decided to donate a small fraction of the wealth they gained during the past two years. It’s important to note the sources of this increase in wealth:
The fact that the pandemic has accelerated the process of monopolisation and concentration of capital.
Trillion-dollar corporate bailouts like the CARES Act, which placed vast financial resources at the disposal of the ultra-rich (conversely, the debt this incurred will largely have to be paid off by the working class)
Capitalists refusing to halt non-essential production, sacrificing workers’ health and lives in the pursuit of profits.
It is from this sort of immoral shit that billionaires have accumulated the fortunes from which they now dispense their “moral” donations.
To top it all off: Billionaire philanthropy allows the ultra-rich to exert great influence over non-profit organisations and public policy discussions. Often, so-called philanthropic organisations function as little more than vehicles to promote the interests of their wealthy donors. In any case, they will never challenge their interests. Bezos’s foundation calls for “market-based” solutions to climate change and will fund lobbyists to promote “market reforms” rather than government regulation. Convenient.
Tl;dr In order to combat climate change, fight infectious disease and cure other societal ills, we cannot rely on the scraps donated by the ultra-rich, to be used as the ultra-rich dictate according to their own individual whims and interests. Particularly when this money was obtained by contributing to these problems in the first place + will not be used to challenge such problems on any fundamental level, but instead be used to sustain the status quo that allowed them to become billionaires in the first place.
